Religion’s new frontier

With some 5,000 extrasolar planets either verified or pending confirmation and astronomers in hot pursuit of Earth-like worlds, religion isn’t waiting to for the shakedown to join the debate about its role. Although Vatican officials have stated their intention to welcome space “brothers” into the fold, there’s no such thing on the Third Stone From the Sun as collective aspirations. We got a preview last month, when Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., charged the search for ET life “is really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution.” There was no wiggle room in Ham’s screed. “I’m shocked,” he stated, “at the countless hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the desperate and fruitless search for extraterrestrial life.”

With sharper optics on the prowl for new earths, the debate over ET’s potential influence on religion has barely begun/CREDIT: damage-ink.deviantart.com

This was a gem of a piece because it showcased, once again, the stark and eternal divide between biblical literalism and the progression of science. While conceding that “the Bible doesn’t say whether there is or is not animal or plant life in outer space,” Ham declares he “certainly suspect(s) not” because “of the meaning of the gospel.” Space aliens, he insists, “would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation.”

Too bad for them. But a more temperate perspective — UFOs: God’s Chariots? — was published this year by former MUFON investigator and theologian Ted Peters. Subtitled Spirituality, Ancient Aliens, and Religious Yearnings in the Age of Extraterrestrials, Peters’ book proposes a middle ground, Astrotheology, for people of faith. Its title takes a direct swipe at Erich Von Daniken’s postulations on ancient aliens, and the sort of analytics EVD applies to support his theories on who — or what — originally seeded Earth with intelligence. But Von Daniken, asserts Peters, is only the tip of the iceberg: “It is more accurate to say that science is a re-expression of religion in a secular guise. Science has become the modern religion.”

Peters, Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, filters four popular ET stereotypes — the interstellar diplomat (the political model), research scientist (science), celestial savior (religion) and hybridizer (a fusion) — through his lens as a Christian. Although he argues that God is transcendent, separate and apart from those models, Peters also states the UFO riddle can’t be solved through ancient sacred texts. “The answer is most likely to come from the explorations of science,” he writes, “not from the speculations of the theologian. What the theologian can do is consider the meaning and importance of finding that we are not alone in the cosmos, but the theologian must permit actual experience to discern the relevant facts.”

Peters also produces a Religious Crisis Survey in which 1,300 individual respondents from multiple denominations and faiths outside Christianity indicated their beliefs would be largely unaffected by the discovery of intelligent life Out There. “It seems to be assumed by skeptical scientists, at one extreme, and by reactionary fundamentalists at the other extreme, that (belief in God and extraterrestrial intelligence) are mutually contradictory,” he adds. “One must either be a Christian and reject ETI, or else one must reject Christianity to affirm ETI. This, in my judgment, commits the fallacy of false alternatives.”

Certainly, Ken Ham doesn’t think it’s a fallacy at all. And don’t be too quick to relegate one of America’s most vocal creationists to the fringe. In June, a Gallup Poll indicated that 42 percent of Americans subscribe to the creationist view of human origins. And that threshold has remained pretty consistent since 1982 (44 percent), when Gallup first asked that question.

Do you like the polemics on Capitol Hill? When the evidence for sentient worlds begins to trickle in, unless there’s something about human nature that De Void missed, we’re in for a donnybrook that’ll make the hired clowns in Washington look like kids in a sandbox.

9 comments on “Religion’s new frontier”

@Larry, Guest
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If one accepts the Ancient Astronaut Theory, then the ‘story’ of Adam & Eve could have physical significance. Again, the Bible (as do most ancient texts) speaks of ‘heavenly beings’. Some are ‘evil’, some are ‘good’, just like us!
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The story of Adam & Eve can be taken as a parable. The takeaway is “If you try to “be like God”, i.e., seeking the knowledge of ‘good and evil’, then you’re going to suffer. Could this be a warning to earth folk: don’t try to understand us or our knowledge, i.e. try be like us?
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The AAT explains where we came from, but not where our ‘creators’ came from. AFAIK, it doesn’t explain where the plants and lower animals came from. Was it evolution? That would satisfy the scientists; something you want to do to be taken seriously. Perhaps ‘evolution’ ‘stops’ with lower primates. Perhaps ‘evolution’ isn’t a chance process at all, but is programmed into the DNA of the first one-celled organisms. If I wanted to ‘seed’ a planet, that’s what I would do. I would also assure myself that it couldn’t progress up to or beyond my level. I leave open the question of who created the aforementioned ‘I’.
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Ég þarf að fara…

I got to thinking about the lack of serious data from alleged UFO pics and vids, and I wondered about the recording theodolites, used to track missile launches, etc. and did some research. It turns out that Hunter Research has an iPhone app called “Theodolite”, which functions like the multi-thousand dollar devices of old. (Hopefully, an Android app will follow).
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This could revolutionize the field of UFO research. It records altitude, azimuth, location, TOD, range, etc., and you can carry it in your pocket. Now if we could only get folks to use it…
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मुझे जाना चाहिए…

What I really find amusing is that neither the Biblical literalists nor the Ancient Astronaut theorist’s or the pedantic materialists that dominate mainstream science would know a metaphor if it landed on them. The story of Adam and Eve is a perfect example of how metaphor can impart wisdom and knowledge if you understand that the story is purely metaphorical. (I.E.- the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil).

Hmm. Pretty good thoughts from Albert. I’ll have to make a note your post.

Along the same lines, wasn’t it Karl Popper who said something about whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, it means you’ve neither understood the theory or the problem? So then, when EITHER creationists OR evolutionists assumes THEIR belief MUST be correct because there is simply NO alternative…

…I am indeed still looking for a third alternative that makes any sense to me. We humans seem to be curiously lacking in imagination when it comes to origins.

Regarding paragraph six in the blog: I tend to favor “creationism” over evolution, but I certainly have no problem with the idea that there are civilizations on other planets, so that “42 percent of Americans” is not necessarily 42 percent against the possibility of ETs.

By the way Billy: I really enjoy reading your posts, so I hope you continue even when you begin to feel that understanding UFOs seems hopelessly stymied.

Ken Peters is right about one thing:
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“…Science has become the modern religion….”
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He’s wrong when he says: “…“The answer [to the UFO riddle] is most likely to come from the explorations of science,…” Didn’t we just have a discussion of the possibilities of that happening?
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The creationists vs. evolutionists debate is silly, with neither side understanding the nature of their belief systems. ‘Evolution’ is only a theory. A theory that stands entirely on near-zero probabilities. ‘Creationism’ is a theory that stands on mythological texts. Neither has metaphysical certainty. The ‘God’ that ‘created’ us, and all life on Earth, could have been an ET. One could argue that the probabilities for that are actually higher that for pure evolution.
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Most of the Creationists arguments are based on bogus interpretations* of biblical texts. This leads to derision from the Scientific community, which (as most religionists do), tolerates no criticism of it’s own doctrines.
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I have no problem saying “I don’t know”, but I have a problem with folks saying “I do know” with nothing but a house of cards to stand on.
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…אני חייב ללכת
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* ‘misunderstandings’ is more polite, but less inflammatory.

While I worry about the reasoning behind belief in Creationism, there is a somewhat ironic scientific possibility: Life, even intelligent life, could be a virtually inevitable consequence of the natural laws of our universe – although we may only know for sure if we can understand how life arose from prebiotic processes (self-assembly and all that jazz). Not much room for Adam and Eve though. Then again, it’s possible that after the appearance of the elements, stars, planets and organic compounds that life in general and self-aware life, were just flukes.